What is McAfee Subscription Has Expired email scam
McAfee Subscription Has Expired Email Scam refers to a malicious email campaign that claims your McAfee anti-virus subscription has ended. The email is meant to look like a promotional offer from McAfee because it offers a supposed 80% discount. This scam email campaign aims to phish users’ personal information, as well as steal banking information and money. As far as scam emails go, this isn’t a particularly convincing attempt. It goes without saying that McAfee has nothing to do with this scam, its name is merely misused by cybercriminals.
“McAfee Subscription Has Expired” email scam claims that your McAfee subscription has expired. The company is supposedly offering an 80% discount for a 2-year subscription that includes anti-virus, safe web browsing, a password manager, and a VPN for 5 devices. The price for this subscription is supposedly CA$29.99 for two years. The email has a “Buy now” button. If you were to click on it, you would be taken to a fake McAfee website and asked to provide your information. You would be asked to provide your full name, home address, and phone number. Furthermore, you would have to type your payment card information to supposedly purchase the subscription.
Since this email wasn’t actually sent by McAfee, your information would not go to the company and instead, end up in the hands of cybercriminals. Furthermore, if you were to type your payment card details, malicious actors may be able to steal your money. This is the whole point of this “McAfee Subscription Has Expired” email scam.
How to recognize malicious emails
Users whose email addresses have been leaked are bound to get this kind of malicious email at some point. You can check whether your email address has been part of a data breach on haveibeenpwned. If it shows that it has indeed been leaked, you need to be extra careful with unsolicited emails in the future, especially ones that ask to click on a link or open an attachment. We strongly recommend you take the time to become familiar with what scam email looks like and how to recognize them.
One of the most obvious signs that an email may be malicious is grammar/spelling mistakes. It’s not clear whether it’s done on purpose or not, but malicious emails are often full of mistakes. They are particularly noticeable in emails whose senders claim to be from legitimate companies. Mistakes look unprofessional so legitimate companies will put in the effort to avoid them, especially in automatic emails.
How an email addresses you can also be an indication that an email may be malicious. When a company whose services you use sends you an email, they will address you by name. Notice how the “McAfee Subscription Has Expired” email scam doesn’t have a line mentioning a name. If it were a legitimate email from McAfee to a customer, it would include a name. Scam emails also often use generic words like User, Customer, and Member to address users.
The sender’s email address is also a great way to check whether an email is legitimate. In many cases, the email addresses will be complete nonsense, made up of random combinations of letters and numbers. In cases like this, it’s immediately obvious that an email is malicious. But in more sophisticated malicious emails, the email addresses may look more legitimate. In cases where it’s hard to tell, use a search engine to look into whether the email address belongs to the company the sender claims to be from.
Malicious emails often ask you to either open an attachment or click on a link. If you’re asked to open an attachment, always scan it for malware first. You can use anti-virus software or VirusTotal for that. VirusTotal also allows you to scan an URL so you can use this feature whenever an email asks you to click on a link. You can also check where a link would lead you without clicking on it. Hover over the link with your mouse and the actual address will appear at the bottom of the screen.
Finally, you can recognize phishing attempts by a site’s URL. If you were to click on the link in this “McAfee Subscription Has Expired” email scam, you would be taken to a site that greatly resembles McAfee’s legitimate site. However, no matter how close the resemblance is, the URL will always be different. So before you type your personal information anywhere, always check the URL.
“McAfee Subscription Has Expired” email scam removal
You can simply remove “McAfee Subscription Has Expired” email scam from your inbox. If you didn’t interact with the email and didn’t click on anything, you don’t need to do anything. However. if you fell for the scam and gave away your information, you need to be extra cautious. Since malicious actors have your information, they may try to perform more sophisticated attacks. If you have paid money for this fake subscription, try contacting your bank to see whether it’s possible to get your money back. It may also be necessary to cancel your payment card if you disclosed the card information to scammers.